What Is Content Seeding & How Does It Work? Every summer, I start a vegetable garden. I purchase seeds, plant them in various places in my backyard, tend to them, and with the help of the right weather conditions, help them grow. Why am I talking about gardening on a marketing blog? Content seeding. But instead of planting zucchini seeds, marketers plant content to grow brand awareness and leads. Let's get into the specifics of what content seeding is and how it works. Content seeding allows brands to highlight their content in places target audiences will see and engage with it. Influencers are a prime choice for content seeding because they usually have large audiences. These audiences have been proven to trust influencers more than their friends. For instance, lifestyle subscription box FabFitFun has a target audience of women "ages 18-34, who love a good deal want to hear about the latest and greatest trends in beauty, fitness, nutrition, and style." When they work with influencers on content seeding, they choose platforms their target audience is interested in, like my favorite podcast, True Crime Obsessed (TCO). When I heard ads for FabFitFun on TCO, I was immediately interested in the brand and what it offers, so I followed the link in the podcast subscription. The added bonus of hearing high praises from hosts I've come to connect with and trust solidified my interest and ultimately drove me to subscribe. That's content seeding in motion. When...

10 Benefits of Consistent, High-Quality Content Marketing In this competitive B2B marketing landscape, businesses make substantial investments in building content marketing programs.Why? Content marketing has been proven to deliver resounding success. As one of the most effective methods of growing audience engagement, developing your brand presence, and driving sales, content marketing is a mission-critical growth method for most businesses. Below, let's review content marketing — the benefits of producing consistent, high-quality content, and how to measure success. According to the State of Inbound report, content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers. Moreover, on average, content marketing accounts for26% of B2B marketing budgets. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts audience decision-making more than any other technique. Consistency in brand messaging is one of the many factors that determine the growth and success of your business. Big brands know how to portray their brand consistently and at every customer touchpoint. The same reasoning applies to content marketing — your content needs to carry a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across all distribution channels. Content consistency establishes your credibility, builds trust, and strengthens your reputation. So, we know the content you create has to be consistent. However, why is content marketing so beneficial in the first place? Here are the top benefits of content marketing. Benefits of Content Marketing 1. Your audience will stick around longer. Great content is an important asset. It has the ability to create positive experiences for your potential...

What Is Content Intelligence? All marketers want a content marketing strategy that helps them generate influence and a large audience. Case in point — “how to develop a content marketing strategy” was the fifth most searched question about content marketing in 2020. Unfortunately, no concrete formula will help you generate incredible content with consistent results, yet it is essential to create incredible content with consistent results. Competitive intelligence poses a solution to this issue, yet only 23% of marketers leverage it in their content creation strategy. In this post, discover what content intelligence is, and the benefits that it will bring to marketers leveraging it as a tool to create their own content marketing strategy. It is essentially a GPS that leads you to a high-quality content strategy that drives leads, conversions, and revenue. You don’t have to guess what will be of interest to your audience because the data shows you what performs well with your audience based on market and competitor analysis. Why is content intelligence important? Many marketers use content marketing to communicate with their audiences and draw them in, and content intelligence helps them do so effectively. Some additional benefits include: Generating a deep understanding of your target audience and the type of content they enjoy based on competitor data and analysis. Data from market research helps you create content that is entirely centered around your users and what they enjoy. Gain insight into various content types and how...

How to Develop a Content Strategy in 7 Steps: A Start-to-Finish Guide Whether you're just starting out with content marketing or you've been using the same approach for a while, it never hurts to revisit your content strategy plan and make sure it's up-to-date, innovative, and engaging for your prospects and customers – no matter when or how they intend to buy. If you're having trouble planning for the upcoming year or need some fresh ideas to include in your plan, read on. In this post, we'll dive into what content strategy is, why your business needs a content marketing plan, and what steps you need to take to create your strategy. Plus, we'll explore some examples of effective content marketing strategies for inspiration. Say your business goals include increasing brand awareness. To achieve this, you might implement a content strategy that focuses on SEO to increase your website's visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive traffic to your products or services. New business owners might assume a content strategy is a nice-to-have, but not necessary early on. However, producing high-quality content can be invaluable in building trust with new audiences and succeeding in the long haul. In essence, a good content strategy is the foundation of your Attract and Delight stages in a buyer's journey that follows the inbound marketing framework. Along with attracting prospects to your brand, you can leverage a content strategy for sales enablement and customer satisfaction. Plus, with 70%...

How to Create a Comprehensive How to Guide The irony doesn't escape me that I'm currently writing a "How to" guide on … "How to" guides. Fortunately, I've had my fair share of experiences writing How to guides for HubSpot over the years — some of my favorites include How to Give a Persuasive Presentation, How to Develop a Content Strategy: A Start-to-Finish Guide, and How to Write a Request for Proposal. How to Guides are incredibly valuable opportunities to reach new audiences with useful, high-quality content. Plus, for both B2B and B2C businesses, How to Guides are often necessary components of a healthy lead generation strategy. For instance, consider how many people search "How to " on Google each day: These search queries demonstrate one of the primary reasons people turn to the internet — to learn how to do something. If your business can reach those users with informative, relevant answers to their questions (related to your own products or services), those readers will begin to see your brand as an authority on the topic. Additionally, they'll appreciate the value you've provided them. Down the road, those same readers you first attracted with a How to Guide could become customers and loyal brand advocates who spread the word about your products or services to friends and family. Suffice to say: How to Guides matter. Here, we'll explore the right structure to use when making a How to Guide and how to write a comprehensive How to Guide....

The Evolution of Content Marketing: How It's Changed and Where It's Going in the Next Decade A sound content marketing strategy is one of the better ways a business can help shape its brand identity, garner interest from prospects, and retain an engaged audience. It lets you establish authority in your space, project legitimacy, and build trust between you and who you're trying to reach. As you can assume, it's well worth understanding. But that's easier said than done. Content marketing isn't static. The landscape of the practice is constantly changing. It doesn't look the same now as it did ten years ago, and in ten years it won't look the same as it does now. It's a difficult topic to pin down — one with a fascinating past and an exciting future. Out of both genuine interest and forward-thinking practicality, it's important to understand both where it's been and where it's going. Here, we'll get some perspective on both. We're going to take a look at how content marketing has evolved in the past decade, and how it's going to evolve in the next one. How Content Marketing Evolved in the Past Decade Google changed the game. In 2011, Google conducted its landmark Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) study. It found that 88% of shoppers use what's known as a Zero Moment of Truth — a discovery and awareness stage in a buying cycle where a consumer researches a product before buying it. Google's research also indicated...

How to Create an Editorial Calendar in Google Calendar One of the most frequent questions we get from aspiring and current inbound marketers is, "How do you manage all of that content?" When we tell them we use an editorial calendar, the next question is often, "Oh, how much does that cost?" Nothing. Because, for the most part, we use Google Calendar. Surprised? There are a lot of great calendar tools out there you can choose from. (In fact, for those of you who are HubSpot customers, there's a marketing calendar built right into HubSpot's software.) But after trying a ton of other solutions, our team found that we really operated the best with just a simple Google Calendar. In fact, this has actually been the longest-running editorial calendar solution our team has ever seen. Here's how we set it up. Follow Along With Free Editorial Calendar Templates Download the Template for Free 1. Download HubSpot's free editorial calendar templates. First thing's first: Download the calendar templates, above (they're free.) By doing this, you'll have three editorial calendar templates on your computer to use at your leisure: one for Google Calendar, one for Excel, and one for Google Sheets. In this blog post, we'll be going over how to import the Excel template into Google Calendar. 2. Customize your template and prepare for import into Google Calendar. By default, the publish dates on the templates you download will be stamped for the year 2016. Feel free to...

10 Content Marketing Analytics Tools That Finally Do What You Need 70% of companies are actively investing in content marketing, and 60% regard it as an important part of overall strategic planning. These points emphasize the need for a strong content marketing strategy. A strategy is only as good as its tools. If you have a winning strategy, but unreliable resources to pull it all together, your plan might fall apart at the execution level. The challenge isn't creating a strategy, but rather, finding the perfect tools to help you manage and work through your plan. You need tools to provide accurate metrics, the insights that will inform better decisions, and come ready with the customization options that will make your dashboard a functional asset. Here's a list of analytics tools that will help you measure the impact of your content marketing. If you're looking for customizable metrics, social media ROI, team collaboration, and SEO information, these tools are here to help. Content Marketing Analytics Your campaigns should be tracked every step of the way — not only for your benefit, but your audiences'. To continuously delight your customers, you have to know what's working and what's not. That's why the tools you're using to analyze results are so important — you get a better picture of who your customers are and how they interact with your content. Whether it's a Twitter campaign, an email newsletter, or a new batch of offers, your strategy depends on content marketing...

How to Create an Editorial Calendar If you're anything like me, you're consistently working out of at least 20 browser tabs, four journals, a yellow legal pad or two, and a myriad of Post-it notes stuck around your computer monitor. To the average overseer, it's nothing short of chaos. To the blogger, it's evidence of a (desperate) need for an editorial calendar. My muddled system transforms dramatically when I work with a team. I realize the need for organization and structure, and this could not be more necessary than with managing a blog. Without a mutually agreed-upon system for planning, writing, and scheduling content every week, you can find yourself in a pile of missed deadlines, unedited blog posts, and a fair amount of team tension. There's no such thing as a perfect editorial calendar — it all depends on the needs of your team. Nonetheless, there are a number of questions you should ask yourself to determine what your editorial calendar should look like. These include: How frequently are you publishing content? Do you have stuff going live every day? Once a week? Perhaps multiple times a day? Finding out how often you publish can tell you how best to visualize your editorial calendar on a regular basis. Do you create more than one type of content? If you upload as many videos to YouTube as you publish articles to your company blog, your editorial calendar will need to distinguish between the two. How many...

Your Blueprint to Create the Perfect Content Marketing Strategy Creating content can feel discouraging. For instance, you might spend hours producing something that's amazing, only to get little engagement, traffic, or leads. What's more, later, you'll have to explain that ROI to your boss — talk about a dreadful workday. If you're feeling frustrated or burnt out with your content creation process, you're in luck. Here, we've created a complete blueprint to a successful content marketing strategy. In this post, I'll walk you through the different aspects of the content blueprint and why each facet is so important for marketers to include in an overall strategy. For more information on content marketing strategies, we've created a content marketing workbook that's free to download. Otherwise, let's dive into creating a content marketing strategy that will bring you that ROI you're looking to earn. How to Develop and Implement a Successful Content Marketing Strategy We're going to look at three different stages that make up the blueprint. These stages will outline the main steps you can take to create your strategy. Then, we'll go into depth with details about making that happen. Let's start with step one — getting decision-makers on-board with your strategy. Stage 1: Getting buy-in from your stakeholders in order to green light your strategy. All great content marketing plans start with getting people within the company to buy into your vision — basically, the people who can give you the resources, budget, or information that's required to...